Snuff It #5

EDITORIAL

Given the interminable hiatus since our last issue, the urgent
questions are presumably “Why aren’t you dead yet?” and since
we’re apparently very much alive, “What were you doing all
this time?” Regarding the first question we reiterate (for the
umpteenth time) that the only thing we’ve all signed up for is
non-procreation. All else (including but not limited to suicide,
abortion, cannibalism, sodomy, dental hygiene, etc.) was, is,
and will remain strictly optional. In other words, we’ll die
when, where and how we feel like it, assuming we’re fortunate
enough to have a say in the matter. Hence the “voluntary” in
“voluntary population reduction.”

Regarding the second question, the simple answer is
“working for the man every night and day.” It was unreasonable
to expect that founding the world’s first antihuman religion
would be lucrative. Gentrification happened, bitches had to
work, and free time was scarce. But it wasn’t a total loss! Mad
programming skills were learned on the job, and subsequently
applied to modernizing and enhancing the Reverend’s unique
polymeter MIDI sequencer. This lengthy process resulted in a
new album of polymeter electronic dance music, titled “Akoko
Ajeji” (Yoruba for “Strange Time”) and slated for release later
this year. Other music is also forthcoming, including a new
Church of Euthanasia anthem called “A Thin Layer of Oily
Rock.” The anthem shares its name and concept with a climate
change presentation the Reverend gave on August 10, 2018 at
Gallery Spektrum in Berlin, to a largely hostile audience of neo-
Marxists.

“A Thin Layer of Oily Rock” is an expression of the new
post-antihuman Church of Euthanasia, in which humans are to
be pitied rather than hated, not only because we’ll be the
primary victims of our self-defeating civilization, but also
because our civilization is what makes us so interesting and
worth saving. This paradoxical ideology evolved from an epic
multiyear argument between the Reverend and UNAPACK
founder Lydia Eccles over the specialness of scientific
knowledge. The argument was formalized on a blog called
Metadelusion, in an attempt to make it less rancorous, but the
attempted de-escalation failed. As Marshall McLuhan would
surely have predicted, rhetoric only became more inflamed, due
to blogging being a “hot” medium that facilitates ranting and
thereby ratchets up vitriol rather than defusing it. Acrimony
notwithstanding, Metadelusion is an inspired work, and
excerpts from it are reprinted in this issue.

Meanwhile the elephant in the room is that during the
Church of Euthanasia’s twenty-seven years of existence, the
human population has increased by roughly a quarter (more
than one and a half billion), with no end in sight. This is no
failure on our part; on the contrary, we predicted relentless
population growth, along with climate chaos, death of the
oceans, destruction of the rainforests, and much else. We
abstain from procreating because it’s righteous, not because it’s
likely to save us from extinction. We often hear astonishment
that that our predictions were so uncannily accurate, but we
refrain from gloating. Schadenfreude is for trolls and smug
bastards.

And what’s next? We’ve enjoyed lampooning
transhumanists over the years, but it must be admitted that our
old arch-enemy Ray Kurzweil might turn out to be right about
the singularity, at least in the narrow sense of everything
changing exponentially at once. The nasty thing about
exponential change is that sooner or later you arrive at an
impossible near-vertical acceleration, like a brick wall

stretching up to infinity. That’s where we are now. There’s no
precise inflection point, but almost imperceptibly it dawns on
us that it’s no longer a question of avoiding a collision, or even
of slowing down; that we’re spinning out of control, and
tumbling over the guardrail into a painful and unthinkable
future. The robots might rise up and euthanize us before we do
too much more damage, bless their silicon hearts, but don’t
count on it.

LETTERS

Hi Chris,

Can you tell me anything about the content of “Snuff It”?
Maybe I would have something relevant to particular articles.
—Lydia

Hi Lydia,

The overarching focus will be overpopulation and the
singularity, as in everything going exponential at once, our
predictions all came true etc.

Another major theme is post-antihumanism: now that
we’re colliding for real with the spiraling side effects of our
accumulated bad decisions, there’s no point in hating humans
for making the same mistakes that any intelligent planet-wide
life-form would be sorely tempted to make, and in most cases
presumably does make. This trope is primarily due to the
influence on my thinking of David Grinspoon’s “Earth in
Human Hands,” especially the notion that failing to make it
through the bottleneck is a tragedy, but only for us, and very
likely a commonplace outcome. Grasping that the odds were
stacked against us from the start is cold comfort of course, but
it does put things in perspective. It’s comforting to me in an
abstract way that according to astronomy and statistics,
somewhere out there in the cosmos, intelligent life has
successfully passed through the Great Lilter.

Another theme is death and stages of grief: preparing not
only for personal death, but the likely destruction of my work
along with everything I contributed to and struggled for. The
persistence of civilization and its accomplishments are almost
certainly a mirage, and this is a very personal tragedy for me,
because I invested so much of my time and energy in
civilization, and especially because unlike so many people I
leave behind no children and have no religious faith to comfort
me. The essential theme for me is squarely facing death at both
personal and societal scales.

I think you were correct that my focus on and fascination
with enormous, even geological time scales in my polymeter
music and art is no coincidence, and relates directly to post¬
antihumanism. It’s an obsession with the idea of immortality,
driven by fear that all this effort could be for naught, and that
we stood on the shoulders of giants for nothing. I feel the word
“extinction” in a personal way that I wager most people don’t.
To me its central meaning is erasure. I used to talk about the
horror of species being erased from earth’s hard drive, but now
it’s my own personal information that will be erased, along with
that of everyone I was ever inspired by. My heroes and
ideological ancestors are all on the chopping block too,
physically long dead and achieving quasi-immortality only
through the fragile storage systems of civilization. It’s the
hideous realization that “The Matrix” was actually a best-case
scenario, in which civilization’s accomplishments were at least
preserved, even if only as data, and that the likely outcome is
much more prosaic: our entire history reduced to just a thin
layer of oily rock, unremembered, unloved, and unknown.

NAVAL ASSAULT ON EARTHFEST

Eight of us paddled an 8’xl2’ home-built raft across the Charles
in a 30MPH wind without drowning (damn, better luck next
time). At first the anchor wouldn’t bite and it looked like we
would be making a crash landing/ground assault, but then we got
lucky and hooked an abandoned line attached to something heavy
(a refrigerator perhaps). Our ground troops were waiting for us to
do something, and Pastor Kim was beside himself with
impatience, but the crew mutinied and insisted on a lunch break.

Ever tried to dock a boat with the sails up? That’s what it
was like after we hoisted the 18’x5’ SAVE THE PLANET KILL
YOURSELF banner. The raft weighs around 1500 pounds fully
loaded, so there was little danger of capsizing. I was more
worried that the banner masts would snap off and decapitate us.
Instead the raft swung into wind, which just happened to make
the banner visible from shore (more luck). Next Pastor Kim
cranked up his brand new “Yakuza style” sound system: a
scary-looking box containing a 200 watt car amp and four
extremely directional 15” horns. We opened with the screaming
babies. A crowd began to form on shore immediately.

We segued into “Buy (Buy More)”, and then “Man of the
Future”. A powerboat pulled up to us from shore, and the driver
started yelling at us to shut the fuck up so people could enjoy the
concert. He wasn’t from WBOS, so we ignored him. Moments
later he was buzzing us, doing donuts around the raft, and making
big waves, presumably in an effort to capsize us. By now we had
a crowd of over a thousand people on the shore, mostly cheering
the powerboat. Finally he headed straight for us, and I prepared
to go down with the ship, arms clutched around the sound system.
At the last second he pulled out, showering us with water, and
drove off.

Next we gave them a few minutes of the cannibal anthem
“Fleshdance”, and our ground troops (led by Vermin Supreme)
went crazy. Suddenly the crowd was with us, cheering wildly.
People who were on shore tell me that they couldn’t even hear
the concert at this point. I launched into an inspirational sermon,
starting with the obvious hypocrisy of littering a park for the
Earth, at a rock concert whose corporate sponsors included
Sheraton and Royal Sonesta. The crowd listened, and responded
with applause. We put the Church CD back on, and people started
to dance. It had been about fifteen minutes since the banner went
up.

The police appeared in slow motion, unmistakable in their
blue hats, puttering out towards us from the shore. I knew that the
picture didn’t exactly fit my dream of premonition the night
before, but at first I couldn’t see what was wrong. Then it dawned
on me that there were no flashing lights, and that the cops were
in a canary-yellow speedboat, flying the earth flag no less, with
two beautiful dogs (huskies I think) snoozing on the bow. They
had commandeered someone’s boat! Apparently they were in
such a hurry to talk to us that they didn’t have time to wait for the
marine division.

It was a classic CoE moment. They circled us once, as if
sniffing us. We smiled, and they smiled back. Finally they pulled
up to us, and Lt. Bearfield explained, at some length, that he saw
us being buzzed by the powerboat, and was concerned for our
safety. Couldn’t he do something about the guy who buzzed us?
No, because the guy had already taken off. Sure. We can see his
point. The wind is really whipping the banner, and tossing the raft
around. Would it help if we took down the banner? Reef the

banner! Down it goes. Bearfield concedes that stability is now
much improved, but he is still concerned for our safety. Nothing
to do with our first amendment rights, of course. Meanwhile a
sailboat capsizes in plain view, not 100 yards away. Perhaps
Bearfield should be more concerned for the safety of the two
boaters in the river? One thing at a time. Sure. Would we be
willing to move to a nearby dock, where we could continue to use
our sound system? No, thank you, we’re perfectly happy where
we are. Well, he still isn’t sure our boat would meet Coast Guard
construction standards. The marine division will arrive in a few
minutes, and they are the experts.

Meanwhile the situation on the shore is getting ugly. Over a
thousand people are screaming “free speech, free speech” and
“fuck the police”. Rocks would have been thrown, if there were
any rocks to be had. Can we talk to the crowd and let them know
what’s happening? Sure, says Bearfield. So I talk to the crowd
for a minute, thank them for their support, and pop in the
appropriate tape:

Be polite and respectful. Never badmouth a police officer,
(ding) The police are your friends! Stay calm and in control of
your words, body language and emotions, (ding) The police are
your friends! Don’t get into an argument with the police, (ding)
The police are your friends! etc...

People on shore are laughing so hard they fall down. Even
some of the cops are laughing. Bearfield is smiling politely. No
offense, sir. The marine division pulls up, with flashing lights
now, and after a brief conference with Bearfield, the marine cop
boards us. He pretends to listen to us for a minute, but it’s obvious
that he’s already made up his mind. He sniffs around, looks under
the deck, and informs us that we’re going to be towed to the
nearby dock, for our own safety. Once we’re docked, we can
continue to address the crowd with our sound system, okay? Yes
sir.

A half hour later, we’re docked, and the bigwigs have sailed
away. We crank up the sound system again, and within seconds
a gigantic, mean-looking officer named Malloy appears and says
“turn it off now or we’re going confiscate it and arrest you for
disorderly.” Surprise! Not really.

No doubt people as a species behave insanely, which is why
there should be less of us, as I’ve been saying for nearly thirty
years. But is the illness curable? Or are we misprogrammed
by evolution to have fatally maladaptive traits, and therefore
destined to end up in the dustbin of history with all the other
failed species? One thing seems certain: from the point of view
of nonhumans, on balance, our extinction would be a great
blessing, not that this will (or even should) matter to us.
Though I’ve said it countless times, it bears repeating: “Save
the Planet Kill Yourself” is dadaism. The planet will be fine. It’s
we, and our complex civilization, that are critically
endangered. If we’re “saving” anything, we’re keeping earth
habitable for future generations of ourselves, and our
civilization. Succeeding will require us to be more altruistic and
cooperative, and to give more life-space to nonhumans and
future humans. We’re either going to value our own future
more, or the future won’t include us. It might help to be entirely
honest about this.

—Rev. Chris Korda

ASK CHRISSY

WAR ON THE FUTURE

Dear Chrissy, what can I do about the climate crisis?

—redacted

Regarding concrete actions you could take to turn things
around: Firstly you could not procreate. Anyone who eschews
procreation deserves a pass on everything else, for the simple
reason that non-procreation has a uniquely exponential effect.
Unlike recycling, eating low on the food chain, biking, using
LED light bulbs, etc. all of which only reduce your
environmental impact during your own lifetime, non¬
procreation eliminates your future impact, all the way out to the
most distant geological time horizon. There is no other
voluntary behavioral change you could make that would have
anything like the exponential impact of avoiding all of your
potential progeny. While you’re at it you could also adopt a
vegetarian—or better yet a vegan—diet. This is surprisingly
easy to do and probably has the largest possible impact after
non-procreation. Regarding your income, non-procreation costs
you nothing, on the contrary assuming you live in the USA it
saves you on the order of a quarter-million dollars per child. In
my experience vegetarianism and veganism also yield
significant savings, despite massive and absurdly illogical
government subsidies for the meat and dairy industries.

Blessed are the childless, for they will not infest the earth.
—Rev. Chris Korda

James Hansen is sometimes accused of overstating his case, but
I find him controversial for an entirely different reason: he
consistently portrays climate change as an intergenerational
injustice. His argument is that climate change violates the civil
rights of future generations, including the right to a livable
world. To my knowledge no one else with comparable scientific
reputation is making this argument so forcefully and publicly.
It’s clever and plays well because 1) civil society avows
egalitarianism, 2) people are justifiably proud of the significant
progress that’s been made towards that goal, and 3) climate
change threatens to wipe out that progress in short order (along
with much else).

Unfortunately, extending civil rights to future generations
isn’t new: pro-lifers have been using this gambit for decades,
with considerable success. Hansen hasn’t made any public
statements on abortion to my knowledge, nor does it seem likely
that he would, whatever his private views are, but his otherwise
laudable meme is nonetheless potentially entangled with
religious oppression of women. The right of future generations
to a livable world needs to be distinguished from the right of
women to make their own reproductive choices. I don’t find this
difficult, but I suspect many Americans will have trouble
getting their heads around it. It’s a PR problem that Hansen may
not have considered.

A more serious criticism of Hansen’s intergenerational
justice meme is that it doesn’t go far enough. I propose a more
strident alternative: war on the future. The idea is that we’ve
declared war against future generations, and we’re winning.
Victory means no future, for our species and countless others.
This may seem absurd, but in my experience paradoxes are very
useful in PR, because they expose hidden assumptions. Here the
assumption is that climate change is merely an injustice to
future generations, when in fact it’s an existential threat , the
type of threat that wars are usually fought over. Injustice
implies the possibility of compensation, but in the worst-case
scenario, future generations won’t even get the opportunity to
bitterly resent us, because they won’t exist. War on the future is
also totally asymmetric: future generations can’t defend
themselves, because they’re not here yet.

WWII and the Manhattan project are commonly used as
analogies for the global effort that will be needed to mitigate
climate change, and this is part of my inspiration, but “winning
the war on the future” is primarily inspired by Jeremy Jackson’s
work. Daniel Pauly’s shifting baselines feel mild-mannered
compared to Jackson’s incendiary “How we wrecked the
ocean” presentation, which he starts by telling the audience that
everything he ever studied disappeared during his lifetime.
Jackson very effectively communicates devastation and
irrevocable loss, not only with his emotional intensity and
relentless examples, but also by using vivid metaphors such as
“silent ocean” and “the rise of slime.” Similarly visceral memes
are desperately needed in the struggle to wake people up to the
reality and consequences of climate change.

There are many versions of Jackson’s presentation, but my
favorite is “Silent Ocean - Perspectives on Ocean Science.”

WINNING THE WAR
ON THE FUTURE

THE JERRY SPRINGER SHOW

It all started when a member informed me via email that the CoE
was featured prominently on a Christian web site. I took a look,
and sure enough, there we were: number two in a list of three
examples of why the internet should be abolished, complete with
a cannibalism-encouraging letter I wrote to some Christian moron
who thought the CoE was pro-life sarcasm. The first example was
our sister organization the First Church of Christ, Abortionist, and
the third example was a series of nifty photographs depicting
various sex acts, including coprophagia (shit-eating) and dog¬
blowing. The site belonged to the Creator’s Rights Party, and their
taste in pom was making them very unpopular with their fellow
Christians. That was about all I knew until a producer from the
Springer show approached me and asked if I would be willing to
debate Neal Horsley. Sure, I said, but who the hell is Neal
Horsley? So I did a web search and who should pop up but the
Creator’s Rights Party. Well how about that.

So it turns out that the CRP is Neal’s thing, and that shutting
down the internet is only a minor part of his agenda. Neal’s main
focus is on encouraging his home state of Georgia to secede from
the union, after seizing its nuclear weapons, and then demand that
the Federal government halt abortion and begin arresting faggots.
Neal appears to be running for governor on this delightful
platform, though it’s unclear how much progress he’s made.
Meanwhile our Springer producer asks if we can supply a
prospective member: someone who wants to join, and would be
willing to do it on the show, in a ceremony of some kind.
Remember, this is showbiz: talk shows love surprises, panelists
proposing marriage to each other, fistfights,
and so on. Sure, I said, and no need to
mention that the person I had in mind was
already a member. A few days later the
producer called back and asked if we could
also find someone who didn’t want her to
join, a fiancee or family member perhaps. Sure, I said, would an
ex-boyfriend be close enough? Grace (our prospective member)
had a friend who was willing to do it, and he got past the
producer’s screening call easily enough.

By this point Vermin, Pastor Kim, and I were having all-day
planning meetings to hammer out strategy and tactics. A more
systematic inspection of the CRP web site revealed that Neal was
an ex-con: he’d been a hippy pot-dealer in the sixties, someone
narced on him, and he’d done a three-year stint in the slammer,
during which time he underwent a major religious conversion.
Could there possibly be a connection, I asked? Pot-dealing hippy
goes in, nuke-loving Christian homophobe comes out, what
happened inside? Was Neal too popular? We decided to send Neal
an email from a false address, asking friendly questions about
some of the obvious contradictions in his web site (e.g. he denies
encouraging domestic terrorism, but his home page features a
photo of the Oklahoma bombing and a comprehensive list of
people currently imprisoned for anti-abortion violence). The
response was mostly flowery rhetoric, but with one electrifying
exception:

“The easiest way to understand what I’m saying is to
visualize what it’s like in prison to be approached by a gang intent
on rape. They might come with smiling faces, but their history has
already proven their willingness to rape. What does a person do?”

The real question, of course, is what did Neal do, and we
asked him on the show, after confronting him with this quote,

though unfortunately the scene was cut, along with just about
everything else we did that involved Neal. But I’m getting ahead
of our story.

At this point the producer called to inform me that Neal
would be joined by his friend Mike Bray, who had done almost
four years in prison for conspiracy to bomb ten abortion clinics.
Apparently the clinics were blown up at night, so that no one was
injured. Mike was unrepentant, and had gone so far as to publish
a book called “A Time to Kill,” consisting mostly of scriptural
justification for anti-abortion violence. The producer also
announced that the show would be titled “Suicide Cannibal Cult
and God’s Army.” Throughout this period he urged me not to let
Neal and Mike back down or dodge the issues, to call them on
nuclear secession and homophobia, and so forth. He had no reason
to worry: we were preparing hell on earth for these clowns. The
smoking gun was an AP story in the Boston Globe that linked
“Army of God” bombings in Atlanta, Georgia—including the
bombing of an abortion clinic and a gay disco—to the Olympic
Park bombing. The story mentioned a letter that had surfaced in
which the bombers railed against homosexuality and other
“ungodly perversions.” It sure sounded like our boys. We decided
to confront them with this story on the show, and allege that if they
didn’t do it themselves, they probably know exactly who did. It
was obvious that the CRP was to anti-abortion violence what Sinn
Fein is the IRA, so we had a pretty good case, good enough for
Springer anyway.

Fast forward to the day of the show: it’s about an hour before
we go on, I’m having my makeup done, and our producer comes
into the dressing room, looking unhappy. “Bad news,” he says,
“we had a big meeting last night, and I was
overruled, so we’re changing the title of the
show to “I Want to Join a Suicide Cult,”
we’re moving the focus away from the
Christians and more onto Grace, Neal won’t
come on until the third segment, oh and
Mike Bray will be in the audience instead of on the panel.” Just
what everyone wants to hear an hour before they go on national
TV. Why did they do it? Were they afraid of Christian backlash?
Our producer maintains it was done purely for practical reasons.
It was felt that the show’s concept was too political and abstract,
and that audience simply wouldn’t get it. It’s arguably true that
most people who watch Jerry Springer can’t spell secession, don’t
know what it means, and don’t care. Once the Christians were
written out of the script, the plot could be reduced to “nice girl
falls into the hands of evil suicide cannibal cult,” which, as
everyone knows, is a Bad Thing.

So the real answer to your question is that as far as I can tell,
Jerry doesn’t have much to do with the show’s content. The
producers set up the plot, and he tries to follow it, which is usually
easy enough, because unlike the CoE, most guests are more than
happy to follow the plot too. Jerry is just a glorified talking head,
and a poorly informed one at that. He probably shows up an hour
before he goes on, they give him coffee and a donut and a card
with a few facts on it, and say “go get ‘em, Jerry.” He reads his
sanctimonious closing remarks off a teleprompter. According to
Boston Globe, when he appeared at a local college the other day
he said that while he his enjoys his job, he doesn’t watch the show,
and “it has nothing to do with who I am.” He also attacked
mainstream news shows as being much more invasive than talk
shows, where the guests are voluntary. “The news is tabloid,” he
said, “not our silly little show.”

Cannibalism is a radical but realistic solution
to the problem of overpopulation.
—Prince Philip

SEX DOLLS IN BROTHELS

CK: On a lighter note: Sex dolls in brothels is already a thing.
NB: Well thank goodness for that!

CK: No seriously, it’s going to be huge. Lots of customers
prefer the dolls because they can do anything without
consideration of anyone but themselves. You might think sex
work is already that way but apparently not enough. People
prefer to relate to machines. “Westworld” is coming true,
slowly but surely.

NB: But they are dolls, not robots?

CK: Yes. For now. Apparently the main complaint is that the
dolls are too heavy!

NB: LOL even the fake bitches are fat cows.

CK: Not really, it’s just that silicone is heavy. But it’s only a
stage, soon they’ll find a better way. Look at this picture. Are
those dental tools? I think they are. I think people are or soon
will be paying money to act out torturing dolls.

NB: Isn’t that our weekend plans?

CK: This totally fits with “Humans” and “Westworld” and with
my hypothesis that the killer app is machines that suffer
convincingly.

NB: As if humanity didn’t have enough ways to be a jerk.

CK: That’s just it. It’s the logical conclusion of the mass
sociopathy Bruce Gibney’s book [A Generation of Sociopaths]
raves about. Persuading people to get their jollies by torturing
machines is a brilliant extension of social control, because
instead of trying to limit people’s worst instincts, it applies them
to something relatively harmless.

NB: Seems like a good idea. But also a terrible idea.

CK: Of course it will have unexpected side effects, as usual. I
predict it will worsen people’s already failing ability to
distinguish fantasy from reality, and therefore make people

increasingly unable to grasp that their actions have real
consequences.

NB: Seems like it. That’s the problem with libertarianism. It
instills that you should do whatever you want. Our culture is
moving towards indulging people’s stupid fantasies.

CK: Yes, exactly. That it’s every man for himself.

NB: Because anything is good that makes money.

CK: And yes of course, this is the essence of consumerism.
Even if “Westworld” doesn’t come true literally, it’s already
true conceptually. The super-rich already literally pay to have
sex with children. Trump’s mob backers do this. Very likely
Trump himself does this. It’s not even unusual in billionaire
circles. [Jeffrey Epstein scandal, “Lolita Express,” “Orgy
Island” etc.]

WAKE UP, IT’S TIME TO DIE!

It’s easy to see that we’ve made a mess of earth, but harder to
grasp that being apex predators this is primarily a problem for
us , and particularly for our fascinating but exceedingly fragile
technological civilization. Sure human extinction would suck
for species that depend on us, e.g. cows, dogs, cats, corn,
pigeons, roaches, etc. but for most species it would be a huge
win. Within a few thousand years (an eye-blink on the geologic
time scale) earth would be replenished with new life forms. If
it’s anything like the Permian-Triassic extinction, initially earth
would be populated by slime, bacteria, dinoflagellates, etc. but
in the long term, giant apex predators would almost certainly
reappear. They might evolve back into humans, but they might
not too, and either way it wouldn’t be our concern.

Ah life changes its environment, it’s only a question of
degree. At the time when plants evolved the dominant life forms
were anaerobic bacteria, to which oxygen is deadly poison.
Plants nearly exterminated the dominant lifeforms by
drastically changing earth’s atmosphere, in what could be
considered the greatest crime of earth’s entire history.
Anaerobes didn’t go totally extinct, they hung on deep in earth’s
crust, in your gut and gums, etc. but still it was a disaster from
their point of view. Yet without this epic interspecies violence
animals wouldn’t be here, including us.

The history of life is chaotic and full of errors that turn out
to have monumental consequences. In fact error is the very
essence of the system, the engine of evolutionary adaptation.
This is what Richard Dawkins means by his catchy phrase “the
blind watchmaker”: there’s no designer, no top or bottom, no
good or bad organisms. There’s just stuff trying to survive, by
mutating in an environment of differential survival. It’s a

Religion and superstition are about as likely to engender
moral behavior as untreated psychosis. They correlate with
gullibility and credulousness, and result from undeveloped
critical thinking skills, which similarly to language skills must
be acquired within a limited time window of child development
to avoid stunting and lost potential. Teaching children
creationism or similar drivel severely inhibits their ability to
fully participate in civil society as adults, and is therefore a
cruel and pernicious form of psychological abuse. The triumph
of the irrational, particularly in America, is rooted in a tragic
failure of education.

—Rev. Chris Korda

Above: Preterm. Below: EarthFest ‘98. Photos by Lydia Eccles.

THE »LM»ET

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THE VEAL

horrible blind force from our human perspective, but it’s how
we got here; it’s our creation story whether we like it or not.
Cancer is just another family of successful patterns of GTCA
code. It’s bad news for us, but from the perspective of
evolutionary success, cancer persists and therefore has as much
right to be here as we do.

God, the Buddha, etc. are fairy tales. You might as well
worry about the Easter bunny. The universe is vast, mostly
empty and hostile to life, and totally indifferent to our fate.
People will either stop behaving like children and start planning
rationally for long-term survival, or the future won’t include us.

The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our
inability to understand the exponential function.
—Albert A. Bartlett

LESS

Less government.

Less business.

Less wealth.

Less power.

Less roads.

Less buildings.

Less food.

Less people.

Less is coming.

Less is already here.

Less is licking our ankles.

Less is rising up to meet us.

How fast should we be going when we hit it?
Some say if we go faster, we won’t hit it.
Some say there’s nothing to hit.

Do you believe them?

Humans will exist for a while yet.

How much should they suffer?

Future generations.

Your children.

Should they pick through the rubble?

Should they eat slime?

Should they die like ants?

Is that what you want?

Here in the empire, it’s a soft life.

It’s easy to forget the Holocaust.

It could be like that again.

It could be sooner than you think.

Less can no longer be avoided.

Less could be gradual, or sudden.

Less will hurt, either way.

Sudden will break more bones.

You could admit you were wrong.

You could apologize to your children.

You could slow down.

You could fasten your seat belt.

APOLOGIZE

Your life is built on convenient lies
And the time has come to apologize
Corporations lie; that’s what they do
But you lie to yourself and that’s on you
The climate disasters on your TV
Just couldn’t happen to your family
Drowning cities are so unnerving
But the victims must be less deserving
Than you and yours, because you’re the best
At working hard to enslave the rest
Of course it had nothing to do with luck
Or a sperm and egg lottery won by a fuck
You pulled yourself up by your bootstraps
Creating jobs, not begging for scraps
You thought the jobless were lazy bums
But they’ve got guns, and they’re not so dumb
The poor you ignored for all those years
Will hunt you down and laugh at your tears
And your very own kids that you claim to adore
Will be fighting for their lives in a climate war
Caused by your system of free enterprise
So get on your knees and apologize
To your kids for the misery they’ll endure
And the hellish fate that your greed ensured
For plants and animals and humans too
Made extinct by a sick world view
We’d be better off living in an alien zoo
We’re up shit creek with no canoe

Apologize

For overpopulation

Apologize

For mass migration

Apologize

To the United Nations
Apologize

To future generations

Apologize

For the dying seas

Apologize

For the clear-cut trees

Apologize

For needless birth

Apologize

To what’s left of earth

Using the ecological paradigm to think about human history,
we can see instead that the end of exuberance was the
summary result of all our separate and innocent decisions to
have a baby, to trade a horse for a tractor, to avoid illness by
getting vaccinated, to move from a farm to a city, to live in a
heated home, to buy a family automobile and not depend on
public transit, to specialize, exchange, and thereby prosper....
Stealing from the future ... Homo colossus was in fact a
detritivore, subject to the risk of crashing as a consequence of
blooming.

—William R. Catton Jr, from “Overshoot”

OPEN LETTER TO THE KID I’LL NEVER HAVE

By Scooter Burch

Dear kid I’ll never have,

You won’t actually read this, because you do not, and never
will exist. So why am I writing this? Because I’m selfish, duh!
Because I possess a vagina, the world thinks it’s my duty to
procreate. Let me explain the reasons why you’ll never exist.

First of all, I don’t want kids. That should be enough, but
no, I have to further explain myself. Similarly, I don’t want a
dog, I don’t want to play professional rugby, and I don’t want
to climb Mount Everest. Is that really so hard to fathom? Do I
need to write a manifesto about why I don’t like pickled beets,
too? Oh, society says, it’s because I’m selfish. That’s it.

In truth, little figment of my imagination, I’m not any more
or less selfish than the average citizen. I give my subway seat
up for old/pregnant/disabled people, I occasionally volunteer
for charities, I bring my neighbors cupcakes sometimes; I do all
the normal stuff people do that proves in the minds of others
that they are not selfish. You would probably do the same. I do
not sit around all day counting up my disposable income and
cackling evilly as I think about how I only care about my career,
while sipping a skinny soy pumpkin spice latte in my solid gold
Escalade that’s unsullied by a baby seat!

Oh wait, no, I don’t actually have a career. But I’m still a
self-obsessed, vainglorious jerk-wad because I don’t have a
desire to leave my legacy to the world through multiple
descendants. How will anyone remember me if I don’t leave
hordes of progeny to compose odes to my memory? I’m so
selfish, the field on which the crowd gathers to sing my praises
will be as barren as my windswept womb! I’m also so self-
absorbed that I don’t want to force my spawn to live in a world
that is on the verge of environmental and societal breakdown.
“BUT WAIT!” you say, “I could be the one to reverse
environmental decay and fix the world! You are selfish because
you are not raising a potential force for good on the planet!”

Yeah, hon. I’m not potentially raising the next Hitler,
either. Or, more truthfully, I’m likewise not loosing another
mediocre consumer of resources onto the planet.

Let’s imagine, for the sake of argument, I were to get
knocked up with and choose to raise you. First, I would go into
debt bringing you into this world because my insurance sucks,
hospitals are expensive, and I don’t have any money. Oh crap,
maybe you need your tonsils out! Maybe you have a serious
medical condition! Sorry, kid. I now have to take a third job to
keep us both fed, which means more daycare and less medical
care for you. But making you sit in a low-cost, probably-illegal
daycare is way less selfish than deciding to not have you in the
first place! Unfortunately for you, I’m not gonna breed because
I’m a selfish evil Feminazi who likes stupid, frivolous things
like sleep and paying the rent.

God forbid your father/sperm donor should be black or
otherwise non-white. What would happen then? Am I a selfish
asshole because I don’t want to watch you get shot by the
police, or get suspended from school for something a white kid
wouldn’t even get noticed for? Maybe I give you an obviously
non-white name like Tashaundra because I like it, thus
relegating your future resumes to the trash bin before anyone
even looks at them. But it’s ok that I’m feeding the school-to-
prison pipeline, because at least I know that I’m not selfish
because I reproduced, and that’s what counts, right?

Even if you do grow up 3/4 white (sorry, can’t make up for
the 1/2 of me that’s not white, maybe technology can fix that
someday), I don’t have a lot of money, so the chance you will

climb out of poverty is almost nil. I will not be able to afford
college, and your future unskilled job will probably be
outsourced to robots. But, I’m selfish because I like things like
cappuccinos and not starving to death. I don’t think you’re
going to discover a way to end the world’s problems with just a
high school education. Sorry about that, my (unselfish) bad! But
at least now I’m fulfilled because I know the joys of
motherhood and being tired and cranky all the time from
overwork and lack of sleep, and will pass that joy on to you.

“But who will take care of you in your old age?” you
whine, trying to change my non-procreative mind. What? If I
am reproducing just for stability in my old age, there are a lot
of variables. First of all, it will take +/- 40 years before I see any
sort of return on that investment. Also, in that time, a lot can
happen. What if there’s a nuclear war? What if a piano falls on
my head before I’m feeble enough to need your help? Are we
even still speaking at this point? Raising a human larvae to
adulthood expends an awful lot of work on someone who will
just stick me in a retirement home at the first sign of me
forgetting my keys.

Internet forums are fond of lamenting, “But think of all the
women out there who yearn for babies, but have [fill in the
blank fertility issues]! Don’t you feel bad for them?” Why are
you even asking me this? I should make a minimum of two
people miserable for the rest of their impoverished lives
because some hypothetical lady can’t get knocked up? How do
you even know that I’m fertile enough to make up for her lack
of contribution to overpopulation? Even if I am able, I should
squeeze a parasite out of my nether regions and feed and clothe
it for a couple of decades just so I can say “I’m having this baby
for Suzi Q. Wombless, because she can’t. Ha ha, Suzi. You fail
at womanhood, I win and I don’t even care.” Real classy
argument, Hypothetical Spawn. I thought I didn’t-raise you to
be better than that!

“But it’s what humans were built to do! Every species on
earth’s function is to reproduce! It’s natural!” Yeah, many
species also eat their young when there’s a lack of resources to
support them. There are over seven billion people on this planet.
When’s the baby barbecue happening? For the record, lots of
animals also eat their poop and kill other animals’ babies.
Who’s to say what is natural?

“But having me will make you a better person! As soon as
you have me, you’ll understand the meaning of life and know
the joy that is motherhood!” Right. Because females have
nothing else that would ever fulfill their lives.

SENTIENCE HURTS

My problem with AI is this: how can I trust an entity that
doesn’t feel pain? Organisms feel pain because it improves their
odds of survival. Even primitive organisms will try to escape
from a hostile environment, and in that moment of recoil they
are riven by something like pain. It’s easy to recognize pain in
mammals because their nervous systems are so similar to ours.
For other animals it’s harder. You might not be able to tell when
a beetle is bored or asleep, but if you step on it and think it’s not
suffering, you’re missing something crucial about how life
evolved. The same hardware that keeps you from burning
yourself on a stove helps that bug detect and avoid danger, and
survive to reproduce.

Healthy people try to avoid intentionally inflicting pain on
others because they’ve experienced a lot of pain themselves and
deeply feel its seriousness. This is called empathy, and people
who don’t have it are sociopaths. Life is serious business,

shaped by pain and death. Birth itself is trauma. For better or
worse, we are descended from a long line of survivors who
suffered and learned from their suffering.

But AI doesn’t have this connection to other suffering
organisms, or to distant ancestors in deep time. AI didn’t evolve
from bacteria over billions of years. AI didn’t survive the
Permian Triassic extinction. AI hasn’t stood any test of time, on
the contrary it’s radically new and entirely dependent on
industrial supply chains that appeared in an eyeblink of
geological time and could disappear just as quickly. AI feels
nothing, and who could ever forgive it for that?

THE BUNNY BOWL

By Rev. Chris Korda

Just past Hartford, on the “Christopher Columbus” highway ...
a highway named after a pirate who cut people’s hands off...
Burger King smokestacks spewing burning flesh ... bulldozers
in clearcuts, giant stacks of dead trees like fingers ... sewers,
roads, malls, expanding, encroaching, more and more and more
... a continuous megalopolis from D.C. to Boston, why not?
Commuters safely ensconced in their pods, keep moving,
normalcy at any price ... High school prison-like on the horizon,
conform to this way of life or be outcast, a lifetime of burger¬
flipping, truck-driving, cashiers, conveyor belts, unimaginable
tedious hours of metal-mouthed coffee and plastic food, wrists
numb, eyes glassy, time clocks ticking, calendars marked with
standardized Hallmark holidays, flag-waving lunacy of
convenience stores and gas stations.

I’ll be the one to change it, I’ll stop the madness, I’ll have
a baby and bring it up right, I’ll teach it to fight the ugliness, to
live the right way, in harmony with the earth, no more
supermarkets and plastic diapers and baby toys, only politically

correct eco-food from coops, recyclable everything, catalogs of
earth-friendly merchandise, Visa, MasterCard. Clad in a
loincloth of spruce branches, living in a tee-pee, my baby will
think like me, do everything that I can’t do, fulfill my dreams
of glorious righteousness, because I’m better, none of this is my
fault, it’s not me, it’s the bad ugly stupid people, clogging up
my drains with their turds, consuming and procreating and
breathing my air, my precious air that’s meant for me, me and
the other good intelligent sensitive well-educated clever
articulate people, God’s chosen people, the master race, we
mustn’t let these morons, these cretins, these useless
cocksucking niggers inherit the earth, outbreed them, more
eggs, more sacred white patriarchal jism, spurting into the
fertile cunts of perfectly-formed Aryan poetesses, we won’t
stop until everyone on earth thinks like us, total control, boxcars
full of stupid people, gas them like Jews, in ovens of fast-food
restaurants, eat them, make them into lampshades, an army of
babies, with my baby leading them, the new messiah, ripping,
tearing the mutant TV-watching shit-babies into pieces, baby
arms and legs in piles, triumph of Shakespeare and Descartes
and Plato, swells of Handel and Bach, victory.

Wait! What is this thing coming out of my anus? No! It
can’t be! A turd, a turd, no, no, what is the thing I’m gripping,
could it be the steering wheel of a car? Oh God, no, I’m driving
down the highway, toxic fumes wafting out of my backside, it’s
me, it’s me, I’m in the dirt, consuming! My kitchen is filled with
Tupperware, my walls are smooth and white, with plenty of
outlets, appliances beckon me, “turn me on, use me,” I’m
standing in line, clutching my debit card, some hairless ape is
jabbering at me, what is it saying? “Paper or plastic”? My
precious baby is a chocolate bunny, flush the toilet, oh the
humiliation.

No illusions
Without hope
Seeing the truth
Through a telescope
Footsteps on the moon
It's really out there
Galaxies spin
Ignoring our prayers
Fields of gravity
Crushing space
Waves and particles
Glued into place
By the strong and the weak
The cold and the hot
Radiating light
To a tiny dot
In exploding chaos
There never was a plan
So you better get real
While you still can
It don't mean a thing
Except maybe to us
A flash in the pan
Before we're dust

A THIN LAYER OF OILY ROCK

We were born in water
Without gods
Over eons of time
Against all odds
Slime shook a leg
Took a deep breath
And evolved into predators
Dealing death
Crawling on the land
Climbing up trees
Spreading like a virus
Crossing seas
We became captains
Of our fate
Is it extinction?

Contemplate
Cells of cancer
Killing their host
Better limit growth
Or we'll soon be toast
Just a thin layer
Of oily rock
Is all we'll be
If we sleepwalk

So wise up fast
It's not too late
Respect the future
Don't procreate
More mouths to feed
Is the last thing we need
How dare you breed
It's nothing but greed
No doubt your kids
Will thank you well
For turning Earth
Into living hell
Your precious spawn
Will end up drowned
When they hear your name
They'll spit on the ground
So face the facts
And take a lifetime vow
Of non-procreation
Do it right now

Because the clock's running out
And the world's in pain
And making more babies
Is fucking insane

The survival of the human species is not a
preordained evolutionary program.
—Joshua Lederberg

DITCH THE PHARAOHS

Iara Lee’s “Synthetic Pleasures” focuses on transhumanists and
their terrifying delusions and hubris. It only considers our
assault on our environment from a human point of view, just as
American media about the Vietnam War only considered the
war’s effect on Americans. Nonetheless it’s full of memorable
quotes, for example:

"... the thing that sets human beings apart from other
creatures is a built-in dissatisfaction. There’s an itch
that we have that can ’t be scratched. Our efforts to
scratch it have created civilization, which is
essentially the practice of trying to adapt the
environment to us rather than adapting ourselves to
the environment. ” —John Perry Barlow

It seems obvious that “taking the machine inside us and uniting
with it” has very real costs and dangers, including the danger of
isolating ourselves from the impacts of industrialism until it’s
too late to mitigate them: “the electricity goes off and you
discover you’re not living in paradise, you’re living in hell.” Of
course most of the human population already lives in hell*, and
that goes double for non-humans.

I agree with Robert Gurland that “problems of ecology, are
essentially problems of transformation ... we might in the end
transform the world in such a way that we won’t be able to adapt
to it... that is, we literally won’t be able to live in the world that
we create.” I just don’t agree that the ethics of mass extinction
are limited to its impact on humans. The view that Earth is a
blank canvas, and that the nonhuman world is merely a
backdrop for the human drama, is suspiciously similar to the
views colonists had of the New World and its native population,
and it’s achieving a similar result: extermination.

Stephen Hawking proves himself as delusional as any other
transhumanist, by refusing to accept that our survival depends
critically on cooperation with nonhumans. Merely asserting that
“our only chance of long-term survival is ... to spread out into
space” like Daleks doesn’t make it a viable plan, and the
reflexive repetitiveness of this theme is just more evidence that
transhumanism is faith-based. Like any religion,
transhumanism is fundamentally escapist, requiring adherents
to believe that humanity’s destiny lies elsewhere—anywhere
but here—when in fact “like Prometheus we are bound, chained
to this rock of a brave new world.” We will either cooperate,
and show altruism towards future humans and nonhumans, or
we won’t be around. Science can’t decide this question because
it’s pure ethics.

The deeper question is: what are humanity’s shared goals
if any, and this is obviously connected to our perception of the
meaning of life, but again science can’t help us since meaning
is culturally relative and highly mutable. If our goal is for a tiny
percentage of the population to party like Egyptian Pharaohs
while everyone else suffers horrifically until Earth is unfit for
mammals, we don’t need to change anything. Neoliberalism
dovetails neatly with new age spirituality in the sense that
they’re both built on victim-blaming—whatever happens to
you, it’s because you deserve it—and together they constitute

the perfect ideology for ecocide and neo-feudal militant
theocracy along the lines of “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

However if our goal is to keep earth habitable for humans
indefinitely, then maximizing the self-interest of a few sperm
and egg lottery winners won’t work; instead we need to turn the
Titanic around 180 degrees fast, and that means seizing power
from the Pharaohs, drastically reducing our population
(voluntarily or otherwise) and reorganizing our whole way of
life around the fecundity of ecosystems. But make no mistake,
either way the long-term future doesn’t include us. Bacteria
were here first and they will be here last. On this point at least
science is abundantly clear.

* “Almost half the world — over three billion people — live on
less than $2.50 a day. At least 80% of humanity lives on less
than $10 a day.” Source: Global Issues, Poverty Facts and Stats,
Jan. 7,2013.

RUNWAY

Violet jewels glitter in the asphalt, some recessed, others proudly
erect in their wire cages, glaring, defiant, thrusting up like
crocuses, unmoved by any human presence, evaporating fog to
reveal the grim architecture of total control, contours fixed for
eternity, nothing less will do. The mechanized juggernaut drags
itself across the landscape, and its details overwhelm, tantalize,
obscure the senses one by one, leaving only a nightmare of
interiors, seductive inner spaces, carpeted boxes, sealed against
weather and other acts of god. With centuries of patient
observation, imitating organic life, absorbing both substance and
form of the natural world, the beast is tamed, molded, pinched
between Francis Bacon’s rotting fingers, giggling as he paved the
way for total war. It’s a war of attrition, there’s no hurry, time is
on the machine’s side; there’s always room for improvement,
tinkering, maximizing, infinitely approaching the zero of optimal
conditions, saturation, perfect balance, both male and female, yin
and yang, the receptacles, sensors, passive arrays, coils, and
vacuums no less important than the ubiquitous industrial phallus,
both extremes and every nuance essential for smooth functioning,
hard steel worse than useless without soft skin of fetishistic
rubber, a yielding calculus to flex the wheels under the terrible
loads of this technological anti-triumph, this miracle of
organization, hierarchy and relationship, this monstrous vision of
human mind made real in riveted aluminum the size of an
apartment building, fuming, roaring, jerking, bucking bronco-like
with furious power as the turbines lift it off the violet-studded
runway, gravity defeated by libraries of data, technical knowledge
applied with ruthless zeal by armies of specialists, nothing but
pure mathematics between my bottom and the receding landscape
that already resembles a child’s game, houses with dolls and
miniature trees, great spirit keep these Rolls-Royce turbines
spinning and deliver me safely to Fort Lauderdale.

Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases we
do not understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is
soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we
possess. What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the
solution but universal consciousness of the gravity of the
problem and education of the billions who are its victim.

—Martin Luther King Jr.

APPROACHING THE END

By Robert Kimberk aka Pastor Kim

As I enter my seventh decade I am increasingly aware the end
approaches. The donkey that carries me about is not what he
was in my youth, and yet I am content. The paradox is that end
does not frighten or depress me. Part of the reason may be that
I have succeeded in my ambition to attain happiness. I do not
have those things that seem important to other people, no
children, no cell phone, no car, no college degree, no credit
rating, and no credit card. However, when I wake up in the
morning, I have a smile, and I hum a tune on my way to work.
Among my joys are the blue sky, the ants in the kitchen, the
squirrels, crows, blue jays, nuthatches, mice, and even people.
I have had a propagating positive effect that will carry on
beyond my life.

There approaches another end that does make me sad. Life
on earth is not what it was when I was young in verdant
Baltimore. The numbers of bees, frogs, fish, and birds have
declined, and I sense that life is struggling. The millions of tons
of insecticide produced each year has eroded the foundation.
The factory farming of fish and trees has depleted the middle,
and without support the birds fall from the sky.

To have mankind gotten this far, but then to destroy it all
seems tragic. My hope is that those that follow me will avert the
tragedy and bring back to earth the paradise it once was. It will
require a reevaluation of what is important. Learn to live with
the bugs, squirrels, and mice. Their health is ours as well. Their
joy increases ours.

Our lives are lived in flamboyant denial of our fundamental
biologic equivalence to all other animals and it is only in death
that we embrace our natural place in the global ecosystem.

—Diane Karluk, M.D.

A NEAR-PERFECT DEATH

I have no idea how I’m going to die, but I know how I’d like to
die: hopefully of old age and painlessly, like my mother who
died on Thanksgiving in the apartment I grew up in. She had a
massive cerebral hemorrhage in her kitchen, was probably
unconscious by the time she hit the floor, and never regained
consciousness. Sounds good to me.

She almost burned the apartment building down, but
luckily someone five floors up smelled smoke and called the
fire department. My mother had disabled her smoke detectors,
because she was a chain smoker. Whatever she was cooking
was reduced to a thick deposit of charcoal in a saucepan. It’s
truly bizarre that she died while cooking. I have vivid memories
from my teenage years of our refrigerator containing nothing
but cigarettes, white wine, and yogurt. Could she have
instinctively avoided cooking for all those years because she
knew it would lead to her demise?

My mother also proved (as if it needed further proof) that
life is unjust. She chain-smoked for over half a century, was a
raging alcoholic, ate whatever she wanted and didn’t exercise,
and died at eighty-four. I’ve known health fanatics who didn’t
make it half that far.

I arrived at the neurology ICU a day later, and was escorted
to a private room in which my mother’s body lay, ghastly pale
and breathing in forced synchronization with machines. The

staff were grimly certain that she would never awaken, and in
case I had any lingering doubts, one of the doctors took it upon
himself to relieve me of them. He pulled up my mother’s
hospital gown, pinched her chest hard, and assured me that her
involuntary response—a spasmodic inward contraction of the
shoulders—was a sure sign of devastating brain damage. He
then lifted up her eyelids and demonstrated that her eyes were
pointing in completely different directions, another fatal sign.
The entity I had known as my mother was gone, irretrievably
lost, and all that remained was biological rubble.

The doctors could keep her rubble alive indefinitely if I so
wished, or they could disconnect it from life support and let
nature take its course. I chose the latter in accordance with the
ironclad terms of my mother’s living will. My mother was a
firm Church of Euthanasia supporter and doubtless would have
appreciated that the Reverend got to make the final call.

I was given the option to attend the proceedings, but after
careful deliberation, I declined. I figured that ICU workers see
death routinely and are largely inured to it, and moreover it
wasn’t their mother who was going to be gurgling and rattling.
I couldn’t see the sense in further traumatizing myself. There
wouldn’t be any last words. There was literally no one left to
say goodbye to. In this instance, I don’t like to watch.

I spent much of the following year cleaning up after my
mother’s life, for example selling or donating her possessions,
emptying her apartment, and so forth. Nothing puts things in
perspective like stuffing your mother’s underwear down a trash
chute in the middle of the night. In such a situation, it’s hard to
avoid grasping the ephemerality of existence.

Yes, existence is a curse for many people, but just based on
the fact that you’re able to read this, I doubt that you’re one of
them. Life can be hellish, but it can also be sweet. Above all it
is short. You will understand this better as time passes. Think
of a time-lapse movie that lets you observe the stately passage
of the sun overhead, and the shadows moving, getting longer.
This is your life. If you’re one of the lucky ones, you will seek
and find wisdom, and then your life will be over.

For those who win the sperm and egg lottery, and
consequently possess some freedom to determine their fate,
there’s an inconceivably vast universe to be experienced and
studied. It contains treasures and horrors and everything in
between. Even the simplest pursuits can be worthwhile.
Knowledge, skill, friendship, love, trust; are all worth gaining.
Communal goals such as peace, justice, egalitarianism,
solidarity, the future, these are all worth struggling for.
Contemplation can be rewarding and empowering. Sex can be
intensely pleasurable and life-changing if the chemistry’s right.
And all this is barely scratching the surface of what’s
achievable, if you have lust for life.

The Church of Euthanasia advocates voluntary population
reduction in order to restore balance between humans and
nonhumans. Members take a lifetime vow of nonprocreation.

Edited by Chris Korda and Scooter Burch.

All uncredited text and back cover image by Chris Korda.
www.churchofeuthanasia.org

Copyleft 2019 Church of Euthanasia. This work is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
ShareAlike 4.0 International License.